Chapter 13
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Three hours later, Gregor returned from patrol to find Fergal propped against the headboard with a law text on his lap and reading glasses perched on his nose.
The glasses were a recent discovery—Fergal’s vanity only extended so far.
After two weeks of squinting at documents until his eyes watered, he’d finally conceded to the small wire-framed pair that made him look, in Gregor’s opinion, like a young professor who’d wandered out of a university and into a kingdom by accident.
Fergal hated them. Gregor found them sexy as hell, which was information he intended to take to his grave.
He locked the door. Engaged the ward. Removed his boots and placed them by the door, his dagger on the nightstand, his gun in the drawer—each item in its designated location.
“How was patrol?” Fergal asked, not looking up from his book.
“Quiet. The south perimeter ward had a minor fluctuation. I reinforced it.”
“Duncan and Donovan?”
“In their quarters. Lights out by ten.”
“Good boys.”
Gregor shot him a look, which Fergal absorbed with serene innocence from behind those ridiculous glasses.
He changed in the bathroom—soft pants, a worn shirt that had been washed so many times the fabric was thin enough to see through in certain lights. When he emerged, Fergal had set aside his book and glasses and was watching him with an expression that made Gregor’s pulse stutter.
Gregor pulled back the covers on his side—the left, nearest the door—and settled into bed. Their routine. Established through repetition, not discussion, the way everything important between them seemed to happen.
He stretched out, his body relaxing against the soft sheets. It was a good thing he didn’t need much sleep because he was getting precious little of it. Too many balls needed to be juggled, too many threads followed and unraveled, too many people checked—and it all came down to him.
No, that wasn’t true. Gregor could delegate. He didn’t want to, especially not when it concerned things directly affecting Fergal, like the travel arrangements he’d made for the Council.
Gods, the Council. Canceling was not an option, but oh, how he wanted to. He didn’t want Fergal anywhere near the Murphys, and with attendance limited to five per clan, he couldn’t bring enough security personnel to protect him.
“You’re thinking too loudly,” Fergal said, sliding down until he was lying on his side, facing Gregor.
“I’m always thinking.”
“Yes, but tonight you’re thinking about the Council. You’re running scenarios, calculating threat matrices, trying to predict every possible move the Murphys might make.”
Fergal really could read him well, which was a sobering thought. “There’s a lot to consider.”
“Can you do that tomorrow? Tonight, can you just be here?”
Gregor turned his head on the pillow. In the dim light of the single lamp, Fergal’s face was all shadow and warmth, the sharp line of his jaw softened by the low light, his dark hair loose against the pillow, his brown eyes holding an expression Gregor had never been able to adequately defend against.
“I’m always here,” Gregor said.
“I know. But sometimes you’re here and also somewhere else.
Inside your head, behind your walls, planning for threats that haven’t materialized yet.
” Fergal reached across the space between them and laid his hand on Gregor’s chest, palm flat over his heart.
“Tonight, just be here with me. In this room. In this bed. Nowhere else.”
The weight of Fergal’s hand was warm through the thin cotton of his shirt.
Gregor could feel his own heartbeat pushing against that palm, as if his heart were trying to get closer to the touch even while the rest of him held still.
He covered Fergal’s hand with his own, pressing it harder against his chest. “I’m here. ”
Fergal shifted closer. Gregor was learning to distinguish between Fergal’s strategic maneuvers and his instinctive ones, and this was the latter. The unconscious drift of a body toward warmth, toward comfort, toward the one person who made the world feel less like it was collapsing.
His hand slid from Gregor’s chest to his jaw, fingers tracing the line of it under Gregor’s beard. Gregor’s breath caught in a small, involuntary hitch. Fergal’s touch on his face was still new enough to short-circuit the defenses that handled everything else.
They both moved at the same time, bridging that last bit of separation between them, and their mouths met.
The first glide was soft and slow, their mouths still closed, just lips rubbing together.
But then Fergal’s tongue pressed against the seam of Gregor’s lips, and his mouth opened against Fergal’s.
The sound Fergal made—a low, shuddering exhale that Gregor felt more than heard—pooled like liquid heat at the base of his spine.
Their tongues met, sliding against each other, discovering the rhythm of their dance all over again. Back and forth, from one mouth to the other, lips rubbing and sliding and pressing until Gregor dizzied with the intensity of it.
Fergal pressed closer, his body aligning with Gregor’s under the covers, and the full-length contact detonated something inside Gregor.
Chest against chest. Hip against hip. Thigh against thigh.
Cock against cock. The heat of Fergal’s body bled through two layers of thin fabric and met Gregor’s own fire, and where they touched, the air itself seemed to vibrate.
Gregor’s cock hardened to something almost unbearable. He should stop. He should end this before things got even further out of hand.
They couldn’t. Nothing could ever come from this. The age gap. The prince and his tutor. The fact that they were both alphas…
“Don’t stop,” Fergal whispered against his mouth. “Whatever you’re about to talk yourself out of, don’t.”
Gregor huffed a wry laugh against Fergal’s lips. The man knew him too well. His mind had already begun its familiar catalog of reasons to pull back—duty, propriety, the secret behind the heaviest door—and Fergal had read the hesitation before Gregor had even finished forming it.
“I’m not stopping,” Gregor said, and the words surprised him with their certainty.
He rolled, shifting his weight until Fergal was beneath him and Gregor was braced above on one forearm, his other hand still cradling the back of Fergal’s neck.
Fergal’s dark hair fanned across the pillow, his lips were parted and flushed from the kiss, and his eyes—those sharp, impossible brown eyes—were wide and dark and burning with something that made Gregor’s blood sing.
“Hi,” Fergal breathed, and the mundane absurdity of the greeting in this context surprised a genuine smile out of Gregor—his first real, unguarded smile in weeks.
“Hi,” Gregor said, and kissed him again.
This kiss was different. Deeper. Gregor’s tongue slid against Fergal’s, tasting coffee and something sweeter, and Fergal moaned into his mouth, raw and unfiltered. The sound shot straight through Gregor’s nervous system like an electric current.
Gregor lowered his body until his weight settled against Fergal’s, and they both gasped at the contact. Through the thin layers of cotton between them, Fergal’s hard cock was evident, and it sent a surge of want through Gregor so fierce it momentarily whited out his vision.
“Gregor.” Fergal’s voice was wrecked, his hips shifting restlessly beneath Gregor’s weight. “God, I can feel you.”
“I know.” Gregor’s own voice was rough, scraped raw by the effort of holding himself together when every instinct was screaming at him to move, to grind, to chase the friction that was right there, separated from his cock by nothing but two layers of fabric that suddenly felt like the most offensive barrier in the history of clothing.
He shifted his hips in a slow, deliberate roll that dragged his cock against Fergal’s through the cotton.
The friction was maddening, not enough and too much simultaneously, and the choked, desperate gasp from Fergal was the most erotic thing Gregor had ever heard in three and a half centuries of living.
“Again,” Fergal demanded, his hands gripping Gregor’s shoulders, fingers digging into muscle. “Do that again.”
Gregor obeyed. Another slow roll, pressing down harder this time, and the drag of his cock alongside Fergal’s sent sparks cascading up his spine. Fergal’s back arched, pressing up into him, seeking more contact, more pressure, more of everything.
“Look at me,” Gregor said, and the command in his voice made Fergal’s eyes snap open.
His pupils were blown wide, the brown swallowed almost entirely by black, and his lips were swollen and slick from their kisses.
He looked debauched and beautiful and completely undone, and something primal and possessive surged through Gregor at the sight.
“I want to see you,” Gregor murmured, rolling his hips again, finding a rhythm now—slow, grinding, deliberate, each stroke pressing their cocks together through the cotton in a slide of heat and friction that was rapidly dismantling what remained of his self-control.
“I want to see your face when you fall apart.”
“Then don’t stop,” Fergal gasped, his hips rocking up to meet each downward press, finding the rhythm and matching it. “God, Gregor, don’t stop, please…”
The “please” nearly broke him. Fergal, who never begged, who challenged and provoked and demanded but so rarely asked for anything, and never had with that raw, shattered need in his voice.
Gregor’s hand tightened in his hair, tilting his head back, and he pressed his mouth to the exposed line of Fergal’s throat, feeling the rapid flutter of his pulse against his lips.
“I’ve got you,” Gregor said against his skin. Three words, weighted now with something new, a promise of a different kind entirely. “I’ve got you.”